And the Still Hour
by miloowen
Summary: The First Officer of the Hood leads an away team which rescues the survivors of the explosion on the medical outpost Chargas, near the Romulan Neutral Zone. The survivors include two teenaged brothers, Joaquim and Joao da Costa. It is a debt young Joao da Costa will repay over a lifetime. A prequel to the A Million Sherds universe.
1.

Joao wasn't really sure why he kept coming here, to this playground. He wasn't even sure that he liked playgrounds anymore, although he supposed he had liked them. Maybe. Had there been a playground when they'd lived in Lisboa? It was so long ago it was hard to remember. He did have a picture in his mind's eye of Lilián, swinging, like the little girl belonging to the Jarillian nanny beside him was, higher and higher, laughing, hot wind blowing through her hair. Of course it couldn't be real. He'd never known Lilián when she was the age of this little girl swinging; Lilián had been six when he was born. The Jarillian nanny beside him said something to the girl in a language he didn't know. She pouted and slowed her ascent until she was swinging at a safer speed.

He'd brought an orange, and he peeled it, offering a piece to the woman beside him. She smiled at him, but shook her head, her starburst-flecked eyes drifting back to the child on the swings. She probably, he realised, thought he was an outpatient here. He bit into a piece, the juice dribbling down his chin. He might as well be an outpatient here. He swallowed the orange and stood up. The artificial sunlight was arranged in a way that was supposed to mimic a day on Earth; it was white and glaring; meant to be noon. He held the orange in his hand, wondering what to do with it, wishing he could give it to the little girl and make her smile again. Instead, he threw it in one of the receptacles and waved to the girl as he walked past her.

It was then he realised he was lonely.

He'd never been lonely before. He was certain, though, that he was. Lonely. He tasted the word before he'd realised he'd spoken it.

"I'm lonely," he said. He didn't say it in Standard, but it didn't matter. The square was filled with people; no one here cared which language you spoke. The universal translator was just that – universal. He said it again: "I'm lonely." He was on a starbase teeming with people from all across the Federation, and he was lonely, which was why he wandered aimlessly to playgrounds and sat on benches next to Jarillian nannies, watching the children of the base doctors and technicians and Fleet personnel play.

He walked home. Home now was the visiting housing for family members, an impersonal collection of rooms, pre-furnished with uncomfortable sofas and chairs and even more uncomfortable beds. It didn't matter, really, because it was only the two of them, now, although the quarters would have been large enough, once, for his whole family. Too large for only two people, he thought as he keyed the doors to open.

"Lights, forty percent," he told the computer.

His father wasn't home.

His father was never home.

He walked to the replicator and ordered a glass of water. He took a sip, then another, and then tossed the glass into the receptacle. The viewscreen was a gravity well that dragged him in, and he willingly ceded all authority to its inexorable pull. He sat before it, a worshipper in a prefabricated church before a pagan god, and input a stardate.

"Da Costa, Outpost Chargas," he said.

Voices filled the empty room. Moving day, four years ago. He watched, speaking his own words as if they were lines in a play. His parents, greeting their new team; Lilián, rolling her eyes at every second word and then the expression on her face when introduced to Dr Lagares's son; he and Quim, hiding in boxes; the dog, barking. Over and over again, the computer lighting dimming naturally into energy-saving mode.

He fell asleep.

"Joao? Did you eat anything?"

He opened his eyes. "No."

"Would you like to go out? To the café, maybe?"

He wanted to say yes, to please his father, to let his father know that he wouldn't be difficult. That he knew his father was trying. That he was trying too. "No," he answered, standing. "I'll just go to bed." He shut the vidscreen off, walking away. A small part of him hoped his father would call him back, would hold him, just once, as old as he was, but by the time he entered his darkened bedroom he knew his father's silence would be the only response.

Unlike Quim, he didn't dream. He thought perhaps he didn't dream at all, but certainly he never dreamed about the accident. That's what he called it, in his own mind. Officially it was deemed a disaster; one which took out an entire medical outpost. He didn't really understand why Quim would dream of it, waking in the night, shaking and screaming, when he didn't dream at all. Why was he well and Quim was not? Why was he alive and Lilián was not?

There were no answers to anything. No reason for him to wake, since he didn't dream. He sat up, set the lights at twenty percent, and got out of bed. He was hungry, and maybe that's why he was awake. The dayroom was dark, his father asleep, and he crossed it quietly, ordering eggs and toast and juice from the replicator. It was so close to morning, anyway, that there was no point in returning to bed. He sat down in the dayroom, turning the lights up to thirty percent, and ate his breakfast.

He was dressed and ready for the meeting at his new school when his father arrived, still in his pyjamas, yawning.

"Excited?" he asked, ordering coffee from the replicator.

He shrugged. It had been so long since he'd actually been to a school that he was sure excited wasn't the word. He tried to think of the right one. Apprehensive? Anxious? Scared shitless?

"You'll be fine, Joãozinho."

His father reached for him, and he ducked away.

"You won't call me that, will you?" He wasn't the type to beg for anything – that had been Lilián's role, when she was alive – but he was ready to now. He was far too old to be called a baby nickname.

"Of course not."

"We're going to be late," Joao said.

"I'll get dressed." His father gulped the last of his coffee and went to change.

The school was on the same level as the main open market, two levels up from family housing. In the turbo lift there were two other fractured families; after only four days on base, Joao could recognise the look. A single parent, instead of two, or three. Children with the same dazed look he was certain he himself wore. And everywhere there was a muffled silence, as if the people on Starbase 515 were too fragile to speak, as if speaking would make the whole experience of being on the preeminent Federation medical base real. No one looked at each other. He would have been shocked if they had.

They walked together, separately, down the corridor to the school. The open courtyard planning of the base was designed to imitate an old European city, with its wide corridors and its gardens and its market squares. Joao could only remember Lisboa through the memories he watched on the vidscreen, but he'd been to Barcelona once and perhaps the interior of the base had its roots there. Instead of corridors he was walking on the Ramblas, and the air was sweet and smelled of the sea, and the birds were calling from the pet kiosks, and somewhere, a sardana was playing.

"Here we are," his father said.

Instinctively he glanced at the other kid who was his age. The other kid rolled his eyes and Joao grinned before looking down at the floor. The doors to the school swished open and they were greeted immediately by a rather austere-looking Vulcan woman in traditional robes.

"If you'll come with me," the Vulcan said. "There are a number of forms to fill out. I hope you have all brought your paperwork with you."

One of the other parents said, "Yes, as instructed," as if speaking for the whole group. His Standard was laced with an accent Joao didn't recognise, even though the family was more recognizably humanoid.

They were led to a waiting room, and Joao took a chair away from his father. He knew he was being unfair. He knew, too, that he was probably being childish, too childish for his age, definitely, and certainly too childish for all of his experiences in deep space. But it was as if there were a different person living inside him now, forcing him to behave in this way. He didn't want to be cruel to his father. He knew his father was suffering. They were all suffering. Wasn't that the point of the program Joaquim was in? That the whole family was suffering and needed to be healed by this medical miracle worker named Dr McBride?

That, of course, was exactly the point. Dr McBride's treatment focused on the entire family, not just the one person who was ill. And yet when his mother had announced, on the morning before they were supposed to take the long, tedious journey to Starbase 515, that she was not coming with them, his father had agreed. No arguments, although there'd been plenty of those since the accident and Lilián's death. Nothing. His father had nodded his head and then the three of them had left for Starbase 515. And his mother had stayed home in Lisboa.

He was too old to cry. Instead, he ignored the look his father gave him, and remained focused on the floor. And the stranger who lived inside him hated them all.


End file.
